Very interesting piece on how the story we tell about redlining and postwar housing loans is a bit more complicated than previously discussed. But new research shows that the maps very probably did no
Americans as a society hate cities, even as most of them live in a city. From Thomas Jefferson to Frank Lloyd Wright and so many others, key thinkers about American life have fundamentally distrusted
We talked about this history a few days ago. And then there’s this story, which is actually pretty amazing. Since she moved back home to Tremé almost a decade ago, Amy Stelly has waged a campai
The Metropole is the blog of the Urban History Association and it is spending this month running a series of essays on the legacy of the interstate highway system. Something that is well-known among h
A reader asked if I’d discuss the 1952 film produced by General Electric, Going Places, which makes the argument for public transportation. I found it just kind of an odd document. It certainly
Tonight’s selection is this 1972 documentary about Boston’s North End, titled Little Italy. I’ve gotten to know the neighborhood a bit over the years living in Providence. But what I
No matter how often Trump tweets LAW AND ORDER, it is totally falling flat. The reason, as the historian A.K. Sandoval-Strausz notes, is that we simply are not in 1968 anymore, as much as Trump thinks
Amen to this: Today, the coronavirus pandemic, in all its horror, opens the prospect of sweeping urban change. Cities suddenly see the possibility of correcting their greatest mistake of the 20th cent